APP OF THE DAY: Pocket review (iPhone / iPad)

Read it later, the hugely useful paid-for multi-platform smartphone app, has had a rethink, a rename and dropped the price tag. Now more tempting than ever as a download, Pocket promises a one stop shop for all your reading needs.

The idea is, should you spot something interesting on the internet, Twitter or Flipboard, then Pocket will let you store it on your smartphone locally. This way you can come back to read it later, internet connection or not. Its old incarnation, Read it later, accumulated a vast number of users. So is the rethink worth it? Read on to find out.

Pocket

Pocket does some rather clever things with bookmarklets in order to let you save things to it. This means once you first pick up the app, the process getting setup is a tad convoluted. To be fair, Pocket's designers have done a great job making things as painless as possible, but a few might find it confusing.

You need to tell your device's web browser to let you save pages to Pocket via bookmarks, as well as adding an email to your address book and connecting the app up with the likes of Twitter and Flipboard. The latter is particularly useful, as, if you use Facebook with Flipboard, you can save pages from that as well.

Once setup, Pocket is incredibly simple to use. See something you like and then just tap the add to Pocket bookmark, or email it to the Pocket address by copying the URL. Then, once you open up the app, you would be able to see any information you have saved to it. You can tag, move and rename items in the Pocket app, as well as open them and read them later.

So simple yet very very useful and now free, with a much nicer UI and cleaner look. Pocket is a handy app for smartphone users who are confronted with vast amounts of online information, but lack the time to read it all at once. We use it to curate a sort of must read list, adding to Pocket only things we feel are totally vital. It makes sifting through much of the trash on the web a lot easier.

Get an account setup here and get saving. We assure you, once you start using Pocket there is no chance you wont find it hugely useful to your smartphone and tablet.